Although a logical commuter rail station at Wareham Crossing is a long way off, I have to wonder how this proposal squares with the new CapeFlyer stop in Wareham Center. Obviously the Flyer needs a Wareham stop NOW, but would it eventually be discontinued or used for summer service only? The Flyer does not need to be slowed by too many stops. Of course it's a concern we don't have to worry about right now - first things first - concentrate on improving the Flyer.

highgreen215 wrote:Although a logical commuter rail station at Wareham Crossing is a long way off, I have to wonder how this proposal squares with the new CapeFlyer stop in Wareham Center. Obviously the Flyer needs a Wareham stop NOW, but would it eventually be discontinued or used for summer service only? The Flyer does not need to be slowed by too many stops. Of course it's a concern we don't have to worry about right now - first things first - concentrate on improving the Flyer.

Wareham Ctr. has few problems:

1) Stop spacing...it's comparatively very close to Buzzards Bay and comparatively very far from Middleboro.

2) It's in a currently free public parking lot relied upon by the storefronts on Main St., particularly employee parking. There's no way to segregate commuters from local parkers the way the access is set up, so keeping CR riders from hogging spots that the neighborhood needs is impossible to enforce. Likewise, converting it into a paid CR lot impedes the rear building access those businesses and upstairs residences need. The town wouldn't support that, with good reason. So while the stop has excellent bus access and walkability, it is unlike some of the other parking-less or parking-few CR stops on the system in having such a wide open multi-use lot impossible to segment between users. Location: superb; configuration: very problematic.

3) It's on a particularly constrained segment of Route 6. It is the town's Main St., not a state highway-grade car mover like it is when it makes a hard left west and spreads back into a 4-lane road. Traffic here is bad enough without having to send all the commuter traffic from I-195, I-495, and Route 28 into center of town.

So while downtown's a nice Flyer stop, for a daily commuter crowd it really needs to be placed closer to the 195/495/28 interchanges since it's likely going to get large park-and-ride patronage. The shopping center meets all 3 criteria for ideal spacing, CR-only parking, and road access where the roads are set up to handle it. It should easily draw from all directions, whereas Buzzards Bay is going to tilt overwhelmingly to traffic coming off the Cape and very little from points on the mainland west or north.

I'm not a big fan of parking sinks in general, and think walkable downtown stops are a good thing...but this may be the only way to equitably do it. Would love to see downtown kept as a flag stop or something, but even that is ripe for abuse with the open parking lot. So maybe that's just a Flyer-only destination. It'll be critical that the new stop get quick and regular bus access to downtown, because that is the main attraction to the downtown stop...the bus stop is literally a block away. Wareham is very walkable, so there needs to be easy and frequent transportation from the parking sink to the walkable part of town.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:There's no way to segregate commuters from local parkers the way the access is set up, so keeping CR riders from hogging spots that the neighborhood needs is impossible to enforce.

They could always make it 4 hour only parking. Would still allow people to have lunch, dinner, shop, etc, but not park there and commute to work.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:There's no way to segregate commuters from local parkers the way the access is set up, so keeping CR riders from hogging spots that the neighborhood needs is impossible to enforce.

They could always make it 4 hour only parking. Would still allow people to have lunch, dinner, shop, etc, but not park there and commute to work.

Exactly. And stickers and specific parking spaces for employees of those stores